The debut cookbook from one of the most celebrated restaurants in Canada, featuring inventive twists on French market cuisine, plus spirited anecdotes and lush photography.
Earning rave reviews for their unforgettable approach, Joe Beef co-owners/chefs David McMillan and Frederic Morin push the limits of traditional French cuisine with over 125 recipes (nearly all of them photographed) for hearty dishes infused with irreverent personality. Featuring lively stories and illustrations showcasing gangsters, oysters, Canadian railroad dining car food, the backyard smoker, and more, this nostalgic yet utterly modern cookbook is a groundbreaking guide to living an outstanding culinary life.

Reviews

Finalist, IACP Awards 2012, Chefs & Restaurants Category
Winner of Food52's Piglet Tournament of Cookbooks, 2012
"As I leafed through the pages I came to be charmed by their story and the unconventional way the book is laid out. There is a sense of history to the book and their deep love of Montreal is evident throughout. There is richness in detail and usually a lovely idiosyncratic story for each recipe that makes the book as much of an engaging read as a straightforward cookbook."
--Judge Alice Waters, Food52's Piglet Tournament of Cookbooks, 2012
"One of the best cookbooks of the year. . . the stories by Frederic Morin and David McMillan are worth the price."
--Edward Ash-Milby, Buyer at Barnes & Noble
"This bizarre and spectacular book isn't like the other on my list--but then again, it's not much like any other book I know of, cooking-related or otherwise. . . a kind of artist's statement for an idiosyncratic and unlikely restaurant."
--Mother Jones, Favorite Cookbooks of 2011, 12/3/11
"Proof of Morin's and McMillan's creative culinary genius."
--USA Today, 11/22/11
"Joe Beef is a Montreal restaurant worthy of a special trip north, as David Chang attests in his foreword to this "cookbook of sorts." The free-form tome embodies the delicious chaos of the place, and the eccentric interests and oversize appetites of the men behind it--chefs and co-owners Frederic Morin and David McMillan. There's history here, including the tale of Joe Beef himself, the 19th-century Irish immigrant, Canadian tavern owner and "friend of the working man" for whom the restaurant is named. In addition to recipes, there are chapters on the history of Montreal eating (spotlighting the "casse-croute" tradition of ramshackle snack shacks) and on trains--old-school rail travel being one of Morin's enduring obsessions. Cook this: Spaghetti "homard"-lobster in bacon-brandy cream; stuffed dining-car calf liver in Parmesan-mustard crust; J